In the prior art there are examples of systems and devices that have some but not all of the elements of the integrated sensor processor (ISP). Designs exist today that perform some image processing in the analog domain within the pixel plane. However such analog domain processing lacks the precision and computational flexibility of the digital domain processing. Other designs exist today in which image data are converted to the digital domain by an array of Analog to Digital Converter (ADC). However these existing designs use the ADC to achieve faster data transfer off the pixel plane but do not include the additional array of general purpose processing elements.
Moreover, devices exist today in which the sensor focal plane is operated at high frame rates and the frames are combined to generate a new sequence at reduced frame rate but enhanced quality images. Specifically this has been done to increase sensor dynamic range. However current art does not include the general purpose computing, and the motion adaptive components used in the ISP to implement motion adaptive signal integration (MASI).
Furthermore, the principle of aligning and combining multiple video frames in MASI to achieve an enhanced result is not new. This type of processing is used to reduce noise and improve resolution (“super resolution”). For the most part such processing is not done as a continuous process on video, but rather it is perform on selected sets of vide frames not in real time. Continuous real time processing has been implemented for the case of translation motion when this can be estimated from the motion of the camera. These current real time implementations do not allow for general motion, nor do they estimate the image motion through an image analysis step.
So, a need exists in the art to built an improved system which overcomes the deficiencies of prior art and provides a very fast, efficient and high performance image signal processing of continuous images in real time.